Staying in touch with your customers can be crucial to seeing them again and again, happy to continue purchasing your product. This must be done in such a way where your customers feel cared for, not bombarded by sales techniques. In this interview between Dale Beaumont and Phillip Mills discover how Phillip has been able to stay in touch with his customers and ensure they keep coming back for more. Take the principles he has used in his own business of fitness and apply them to your own and see the difference this could bring!
Phillip Mills is the CEO of Les Mills International. A New Zealand based company that licenses fitness programs in over 55 countries around the world.
Within your own fitness centres, how do you stay in touch with your customers and ensure that they keep coming back?
We do many things to make sure that we stay in touch with customers, such as:
- Personally spending time working out in the clubs and talking to our members.
- Investing heavily in market researchers who find out exactly what our customers want from us and what they think of our products.
Some of the things we do to keep people coming back are:
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Make new customers feel comfortable – New members begin with at least two or three sessions with a personal trainer – this makes them feel at home because they have a ‘friend’ at the gym and also ensures that they are properly educated about how to get the best out of the club.
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Make exercise a great experience – In addition to having great exercise classes, our clubs are well-equipped, averaging around 100 pieces of cardio equipment, and 100 to 200 pieces of resistance equipment. One of our innovations in the newer Les Mills clubs is the ‘Cardio Cinema’, which is an evolution of the cardio theatre. It’s a cardio equipment room with a single, large cinema screen playing music videos with a loud, pumping sound system. We also have well-developed systems consistent with our focus on ‘exertainment‘ (exercise and entertainment) for club design and decor, sales, marketing, personal training, customer service, IT/administration and management.
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Cater for everyone, even the kids – We have fully accredited kindergartens in most of our clubs. It’s a big advantage for parents to be able to leave their children in crèche so that they can have some time to exercise, but it’s also becoming increasingly important to get children exercising too. Childhood obesity is increasing dramatically as children spend more time playing computer games and watching TV, and less time playing sport.
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Keep in touch with our members – We have a department that deals specifically with member retention. They use many techniques to keep in touch with our members and to make sure they’re getting the most out of their membership.
For more of this interview and how to stay in touch with your customers check out “Secrets of Male Entrepreneurs Exposed!“
